7 Reasons Tennis Is The Only Workout You Need In Your Life

Dust off the racket and sign up for free sessions from the Lawn Tennis Association.

1. It helps you get pretty hench.

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Your biceps, triceps, and shoulders get a rigorous workout from hitting that ball back and forth. Add in all the bending and jumping you do to generate power through your legs, and you're strengthening all kinds of different muscle groups in a whole lot less time than it takes to do those sets at the gym.

2. But it also helps you get lighter on your feet.

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Tennis is excellent for improving your fast-twitch muscle fibres. These are used for those explosive movements, as you react to all the different shots that come your way.

As much as they're useful on the court, there's plenty of off-the-court applications too, like dashing for the bus in the morning.

3. Tennis is a form of HIIT, which is great for building strength and burning fat.

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Tennis is anaerobic exercise (interval training), which means it helps you build some serious strength and power. Those intense bursts of movement you do in tennis also mean that the average person burns up to 800 calories per hour playing singles.

That's not bad for an activity that's usually considered quite leisurely. In fact, it's actually around a similar level as what you'd expect from a spin-class.

4. Those grunts you do during tennis? Great for your abs.

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It's what you're most likely to tut disapprovingly at on TV, but did you know all that screaming comes with training up your core?

In tennis, all your power comes up from your feet, travelling through your body and out of your racket. As you work on controlling those big power strokes, you're training your core to help perfect that transfer of energy into your shot. With that massive expulsion of tension, it's slightly more understandable why you'd want to start screeching like one of those foxes that goes through your dustbins at 3 in the morning.

5. It's a workout for your brain, too.

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Tennis usually involves a lot of brain-flexing. You need sharp reactions, quick reflexes, and tactical thinking to win, which requires some pretty speedy problem-solving from your brain.

It's way more brain power than you used trying to figure out when that dude at the gym would be done with the free weights you wanted.

6. Plus, you shouldn't discount the social exercise either.

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Mental health is just as important as physical health, and what sets activities like tennis apart is that it's exercise that doesn't necessarily feel like exercise.

It's one of the most inclusive sports you can find, and studies show physical activity has a positive impact on mood, stress, and self-esteem.

Plus, those post-game drinks are a pretty sweet reward, too.

7. And it turns your body into a well-oiled machine.

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When playing tennis, your body needs to run like a tight ship; it's all about maintaining perfect control of your body as you throw it about the court, shift your body weight, and adjust your balance to send the ball back with as much power as possible.

Basically tennis requires lot of things to happen in perfect synchronicity, which sounds pretty daunting, but actually a lot of it is instinctual. While you are focused on just running over there and hitting that ball back, your body is working overtime to keep everything moving and enabling you whack it exactly where you want.

(So you're a lot more impressive than you realise!)

Get on the court this summer with Advantage Tennis Training and Tennis Tuesdays at more than 100 venues across the UK.

Sharpen your game to beat your mates with Advantage Tennis Training, weekly coaching sessions for men focused on improving all areas of your game. Remember, loser buys. #Advantage

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